Watch Twitch on your phone or tablet with 8Stream

Heard of 8Stream? It's an excellent third-party Twitch app for Windows and Windows Phone that is too good not to highlight. We don't have any word on official Twitch apps coming out for Windows, so we're left trying out different third-party apps. 8Stream for Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 is an excellent app for Twitch fans wanting to watch live video game sessions on their phone or tablet.

We've been using 8Stream the past few weeks. It's a great app that does everything you'd want from an official app. Here's the full list of features available to those using 8Stream:

Watch Stream in any qualities (if available)

All games

Featured streams

Followed streams

Login to twitch.tv

Chat support

Search games, channels, and streams

Follow and unfollow channels

The Windows 8.1 8Stream app has the above features, but adds the following:

Stream audio only

Background stream audio

Snapview for the player

Twitch is the standard online platform for watching live video game streams. The Xbox One is able to natively stream to Twitch from the console itself, but some users use extra hardware called capture cards to stream content. Why would you want to watch someone play video games? I thought it was bizarre until I tried it a few years ago. It's not as alien as you might think, in fact I'd argue it's no different than watching professional sports teams play on television.

I've been loving the app on Windows 8.1. In fact it's my preferred way to watch Twitch on any PC. You can snap the app, hide the chat box and just enjoy some gameplay while you're doing your regular work. Another neat feature is the ability to only listen to the audio of a stream. I haven't found myself using that too much. But I see its utility for the Twitch streamers that do their streams as more of a podcast where the dialog is what you're tuning in for.

The Windows Phone version of the app is killer too. You can watch a stream and chat in portrait mode or rotate your phone to landscape to get a full-screen view of the stream.

In both versions of the app you can select and toggle stream quality, follow and unfollow channels, browse for games and more.

Anyone wanting to watch Twitch on their phone or tablet needs to try out 8Stream. The app is free and ad-supported, but an in-app purchase of $1.99 removes those ads. Let us know what you think of 8Stream!